Let Dr Ai’s story flee: a minor practice against China’s internet censorship during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This visual essay adopts Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptual constellation revolving around the notion of minor language to analyze the minor texts that Chinese netizens created to bypass China’s Internet censorship and continuously circulated Chinese Dr Fen Ai’s interview about the early outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan. The essay argues that the netizen’s minor texts deterritorialise the major or standard use of the Chinese language online and enable Dr Ai’s story to flee the realm of representation. The anti-censorship relay campaign spontaneously launched by China’s Internet users has become a noticeable visual event in China’s social media space.